This wasn’t going as it should.
The company chief looked at the hand mirror but did not see his own tough scales and yellow eyes. Instead, it showed him the faces of four drakes of similar red golden complexion. All bore grave expressions, their wide maws opened to reveal rows of small sharp teeth and hissing tongues.
‘The loss of half your company is a disaster, Scilo, but at least this confirms their location. It is best for you to take distance until we can converge.’ The company chief said.
‘This should take only several days. Our mission is going swimmingly.’ Said another, and Scilo hissed painfully. Yet, there was no effort to conceal the snide. ‘In that time, we can expect the full support of the whites.’
The company chief decided to intervene before insult turned to injury.
‘Take care to establish yourselves in the area. Maintain your current numbers. We will sustain daily communications. We are homing in on the main objective, that is the most critical takeaway. Is everyone aware of the coordinates?’
‘Yes.’ The drakes said in unison.
‘Concluded.’
The mirror glazed over, revealing only his face. He saw how red scars ripped through bronze scales and counted his blessings. Then he hoped for more.
Of all the creatures in the labyrinth the lizardman shunned the ratmen with a passion. They were tenacious, murderous pests. Not that they were particularly strong, the Arachnea were far more terrifying in that regard, but all that the rats touched turned vile as they carried disease in the core of their beings. Even a ratman’s weapons morphed into venomous stingers the longer they were carried, the more it was used, as if death found a small home in the crude tools. A small nick to the scales could turn into a fatal infection. You could easily win the battle, but just as easily return home without the army you set out with. Rats revered Death and Death embraced them as messengers of her blessing.
That terrified him.
He walked back from a tunnel towards where they had set up homebase. He had to walk into the labyrinth for a moment of privacy, which he needed too often, the subject of their discussions being a delicate matter after all. Annoyedly and clumsily, he jumped over the pikes they had mounted by the entrance. When he’d get home, he would have a stern talking to whoever organized logistics for the mission. There was some constructive feedback he wanted to deliver… with his fist.
He looked around the space where the collected lizards had put up their efforts to manage the cold. Around a few small campfires laid groups of cuddled up scales sharing body warmth. The labyrinth was harsh, constantly uncomfortably chilly. It could make you sick and sluggish. Of course, except for those born with the fire inside of them or those two muscle heads with their new clubs. Bronq and Phath, the prince’s bodyguards, had gotten incredibly lucky. As the story goes, they stumbled on a mythical spider and managed to kill it. The beast had then vomited two magical clubs, inlaid with large rubies. The weapons positively radiated with heat, ready to explode at will. The beast must have been powerful for such a reward. Was their victory due to the leadership of the crown he wondered and looked meaningfully at the golden threads on Xass his black army tunic. Ragon rewarded those who destroyed exceptionally, and often He would answer the need of the Lizardkind with a fire to carry at their side.
‘Gather around, skinks!’
There were about 24 Lizardmen gathered in space. It took a few seconds for 22 of them to gather around him and fall in line. In the distance he could see Phath sleeping on the ground and Bronq raising a club, ready to hit him on the head.
‘Bronq, you gecko shaped piece of waste, I will send you both home if you are not here within the second!’
The buff lizard hissed with fright before he took his friend by the ankle to drag him into file.
‘All company chiefs have reported a complete clearance of their designated posts. All except company 3. We suspect to find the main objective in their area. We are clearing up camp and relocating to these coordinates. We split into three divisions to travel to the next area. Team one to three will follow Salazar. Team four through six will follow Xass. The other teams will follow me. The division leaders will come to me to discuss routes after we take down homebase.’
The slender shapes started to spread around in four teams to clear the tunnels and prepare the protective spears for transportation. He watched as they filled their bags, gathered any essentials, and organized themselves. While they cleared up, he gave the mission some thought.
Some things didn’t add up within the reports. He was of course privy to the report about two “high rats” decimating a veteran team within seconds, only letting a single soldier escape back in the tunnels, gravely wounded.
Shocked as this individual had been, his testimony seemed eerily accurate. He didn’t speak of high rats, naturally. His grasp on the old language was far too poor to appreciate the classical literature depicting the creatures. Yet the way described the almost noble posture he described, the gentle movements and expressions. The lack of any symptoms that hinted at any sort of sickness or ailments. These all radiated with the stillness of Death’s mythical enforcers of change, the high rats. A fairy tale of course, perhaps narrated to him as a child by a bored scholar. He must have been mistaken in his observations in the heat of the moment. He had been a significant distance away as he recalled.
A later report also confirmed a sighting of ratmen in the tunnels, and he had even heard rumors of a ratman being sighted in the castle, running around with a wheel of cheese. Preposterous of course, but the sighting in the tunnel rang true. They had even taken down a group of four of the beasts, with which they returned. At great cost, as one of our soldiers had died in the skirmish and the other two had to amputate limbs to survive the infections.
Initially he had been relieved. Then he noticed the discrepancies. The corpses looked exactly what you’d expect. Curled up backs, yellow broken teeth and patches of missing fur replaced by ulster and thick scar tissue. They were dressed in dirty clothes, barely describable as clothes, and carried carved out fangs and rotting wooden spears, discolored by the repeated drying of blood.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
The first soldier had not brought back a corpse, but he had carried, imbedded into his shoulder, the spear used to decimate his party. The company chief had asked to see it. To his utter surprise, the spear was a simple, sort of straight stick of petrified wood. It was entirely clean. It showed signs of being torn from the wall, not chewed, but torn. A ratman had ripped this off the wall and thrown it halfway through a tunnel to nearly kill a veteran soldier. A shiver went through his back as he thought back to this.
---
Xass his tail dragged over the ground as his eight lizards trekked on through the tunnels. The other soldiers were all carrying sticks, bags, and other miscellaneous items. He was tasked with overseeing this impromptu division. Since there were several tunnels leading to the destination from where they had built the homebase they had to be prudent in relocating. If a small squad of rats managed to slip by them by pure luck, it could mean they were back at square one.
At the front, three of the eight soldiers carried but a bag, ready with their bows to intercept any unexpected confrontations. At the back of the group Bronq and Phath carried an abundance of items, far enough back that they wouldn’t give away their location by the constant snickering and insults, yet close enough to be seen by Lazzy, who had been appointed by Xass to keep an eye out on the two. They had only lost the two idiots a handful of times. All things considered the expedition was a success. Xass blessed the company chief for sending them on the shortest route, allowing them to arrive only moments after the other two divisions at the designated location.
As most of the company busied themselves with setting up the barricades and fireplaces in the cramped open space, Xass discussed the expedition with the company chief and the other division leader. All three came to the same conclusion. Although none of them had encountered the furry bringers of death, they did find clear traces of the creatures; poop tracks of about the right size; cadavers that were stripped of meat and hide. It was clear to them that they were close to the objective.
---
Xass squatted, his tail swayed, sweeping the dirt on the ground. It would still take three days before the other companies were set up. Meanwhile they would rest and control the area, which posed its own specific challenges.
He watched how Phath demolished an entire barricade to venture into the tunnels, presumedly for a piss. He had followed the entire affair. The lizard man, roughly twice the size of the other individuals within the camp, tried to fit through a passage within the pikes, constructed for this exact purpose. Phath however did not fit in any way, but he tried, squeezed, and got poked painfully in the stomach until he roared in anger, throwing the entire wood construction up into the air.
He watched him walk into the darkness, leaving two hours of work scattered around the floor.
His tail swept up a dust cloud. Something about waiting agitated Xass.
The company chief had left earlier that day with two soldiers to meet with the other company chief that was set up in this area. It baffled him to think they could find the other homebase. There were a lot of things he didn’t know yet. But he would wait here for three whole days. The current encampment was of a different nature from the last. Its purpose was not to explore, but to hold. The open space connected to four paths, of which two connected them to the zone where the objective resided. Further down the paths you ran into different crossroads, leading to entirely diverging passageways. In the thousand years of their history, they had become prodigies at mapping the labyrinth, still it was difficult for them to pinpoint exactly where this area bottlenecked into other areas, so they could defend the most critical points.
They did it anyway. Homebase currently held only 12 soldiers, of which three were currently collecting provisions, and yet another three were distributing these provisions to the four teams stationed at four separate bottlenecks that the rats would have to pass if they wished to escape their deathtrap. The other company would make their share of efforts to contain the infestation, and yet another company should be arriving from the other side of the labyrinth, ensnaring the trap.
He was stuck at homebase. He had to babysit the idiots. Swish. Swish.
---
The next day one of the four teams arrived back at homebase. One of them seemed to not feel well. They had an encounter in one of the bottleneck hallways. They fought back well, pushing the quarry back where it came from, and waited for the rations team to arrive to request them to be relieved. One of them had received a shallow wound on his arms and did not feel well afterwards. Once in the encampment, his condition worsened. He screamed for an hour or two before he died. Xass and another soldier took an arm and leg both to carry the dead body away from the camp. The lizard’s tail was a heavy dead weight and made a distracting noise as it dragged on the ground, but Xass could only look at the rotting white mess on the arm where the lizard was cut.
---
The next day another squad returned to camp with another wounded soldier. He had received just a small cut under his eye. They were relieved very fast in a stroke of luck, but after an hour the skink was unrecognizable as his face turned purple, one eye leaked from its socket, and he hysterically wept from the other, keeping his head in his arms while he rocked in a squatted position.
Xass carried his dead body into the passageways and put him with the other corpse.
He boiled from the inside.
His tail twitched back and forth. He squatted with his hands on the back of his head. His black tunic fell loosely between his legs into his vision. The golden patterns swirled around in his jacket as he attempted to keep his calm, deeply in and hissing out. The threads were magical and moved through the fabric of the tunic at will, reacting to his mind, shining brilliantly. He would look at them when he needed meditation, but this time they failed to calm him down. They had been there for as long as he could remember.
A few hours later Lazzy collapsed and stopped breathing. It came out of nowhere. Suddenly he threw up blood, minutes later he was dead.
They carried the body and threw it on the pile.
He clenched his jaw and fists so tight the nails nearly drew blood.
Boiling. Seething.
An orange light lit up in his throat and the soldier with him jumped nearly into the ceiling when the fire spat through Xass his teeth, setting the corpses ablaze within the sound of his scream.
It was unprofessional, but that didn’t matter. The rage he felt justified it. The other lizard said nothing at the fire behind his eyes. Might he feel just the same.
---
The next day all teams returned to homebase, relieved by other companies that finally reached the area. Tired eyes cautiously looked around the camp. They had not slept, none of them. The rats dominated the night, leaving them no reprieve. Two teams were incomplete, having lost a soldier each. Other teams returned empty faced, with amputated arms and tails. Time would tell if they were blessed with regeneration. They just might. They were the lucky ones.
The company chief also returned that day, informed them the siege would take place the next day and thanked Xass for the leadership he showed, but Xass didn’t understand. He was told to rest, so he joined the pile that was Bronq and Phath. For the first time he felt the warmth of the campfire. A fire burning within had kept him away from the flame. It surprised him how much it hurt him at every moment, like an aching wound on his heart. His own heat wanted to be cooled down, but the new warmth gave reprieve. A seething anger for the corrupting pestilence in his labyrinth. He felt urged to exterminate the infectious vermin. For the sake of civilization, he’d kill all the rats.